This invention relates to infant incubators and, more particularly, to a latch operable with a handhole door used to gain access to an infant positioned within the incubator.
Handholes are conventionally used with incubators and are basically small doors that are normally closed and are opened by hospital personnel so that the personnel can insert their hands into the incubator to attend to the needs of the infant.
Typical of such incubator handholes are found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,773,392 of Koch and assigned to the present assignee.
One current difficulty with such handholes involve the noise and vibration generated when the handhole door is snapped shut. Typical door latches are spring biased and when the door reaches the closed position, the latch mechanism moves to secure the door with a loud noise and accompanying vibration to the incubator.
Since the infant inside is obviously susceptible to noises, the closing of the handhole door frequently results in startling the infant and the infant jumps involuntarily.
The trauma and sudden movement of the infant is not desireable and thus the loud snapping action of the incubator handhole door latch is preferably eliminated.